10 Questions for . . . Marianne Cusato

In this installment of 10 Questions for . . . , Senior Editor Daniel DiClerico speaks with Marianne Cusato, author, architect, and number four on Builder magazine's "Power on 50" list of the housing industry's most influential people. Cusato talks about the rise of the McMansion, what makes a great neighborhood, and why the green movement still has room to grow, and gives her opinion on "no-maintenance materials.

When did the McMansion era begin?
It all started in the 1980s. McMansions were a natural reaction to other bad architecture: cookie-cutter homes. Someone came in and said, "These houses are ugly. What can we do?" And the answer was, "Let's add this, let's add that, let's make them bigger." Little by little the houses kept growing and growing. There was an "I see your gable and raise you two" attitude. At the same time money and gas were really, really cheap. So it was easy to expand outward.

It's not just the architecture then. It's also the location?
The issue is that the farther out homes get from stores and other amenities, the more we depend on the home to meet all of our daily needs. We used to be able to meet our needs with a 5-minute walk, then a 5-minute drive, now it's a 45-minute drive. That means if you want to watch a movie, you need a media room. A developer in Texas told me recently that he can't sell a home without a room called the "hair salon."

But aren't developers just giving people what they want?
Everybody is responsible. Everybody is held hostage by what they think everybody else wants. I'll have this conversation with a builder, and he'll say, "I agree with you, but I can't sell it." This is why the McMansion movement got so big. It happened a little bit at a time, and nobody stepped in and stopped it. It's taken a major intervention—that being the cost of oil and the mortgage crisis—to shake everything up to a point where we come in and say, "Actually there's another way to build and it's more efficient."

What role can home buyers play?
The key piece of the puzzle is telling home buyers that they can have something other than the default setting. An educated homeowner walking into the builder and saying "I will buy something other than what you are offering" is the key to releasing this endless cycle.

You use the term streetscape in your book The Value of Design. What do you mean by streetscape?
It's the feeling of an outdoor room. When you walk out your front door, you should feel like you're in a place, not just a space. The front door in many American homes is just a giant garage door. A street of garage doors is usually quite wide and is not designed for pedestrians to share. I fully acknowledge that the vehicle is an essential part of our society, but it's not more essential than the people who drive it. What we've done is turned the design of our streets and our homes into 100 percent vehicle-dominated areas.

Is this where the term "snout house" comes in?
Yes, a snout house is a house that looks like a pig. It has a big nose out there—the garage—and nothing else. Who lives in this house: a person or a car? A front-loaded garage is perfectly fine, but make it a secondary element that's attached to one side of the house. Push the garage back a little and you'll even have room for parking. You can avoid a snout house by making the portion of the house that people live in more important than the portion of the house where the car lives.

If people only remember one of your eight components of a valuable home, what should it be?
Common sense. For example, using materials according to their physical properties. Brick and stone are both load-bearing materials, which means historically they supported their own weight. So you wouldn't have vertical strips of either of those materials going up high into a gable surrounded on both sides by siding. Avoid materials that make the house look like a patchwork quilt and design elements that look like they could take flight off the building—enormous gables, three-story entrances, etc. All of this adds unnecessary cost to the home and actually detracts from the value. Real value comes from elements that make sense, like windows on the side of the house that allow cross ventilation, making the home more comfortable and efficient to heat and cool. (Download Cusato's eight_components of a valuable home.pdf)

Protect Your Investment: Consider climate when building a new deck

If summer has taken a toll on your deck and you plan to replace it this fall or next spring, wouldn't it be nice to have a crystal ball to predict how long the deck will last, whether its color or grain will fade in the sun, or whether mildew stains will appear on shade-covered parts?

To get a glimpse into how well the almost two dozen different decking materials we recently tested might do after a year in different conditions, we left samples of each in Florida (warm, humid climate) and in Arizona (warm, arid climate); as a reference, we also kept a sample of each indoors in our labs.

(From left to right, the columns in the photographs here show the decking after one year stored in our lab; in Florida; and in Arizona. The five rows from top to bottom show the decking unwashed; washed with water and a brush; washed with OxiClean and a brush; washed with Behr wood cleaner; and cleaned with a pressure washer.)

Our testing indicates that rain and humidity foster the greatest mildew growth on composite decking materials. ChoiceDek (shown above), Monarch Exotics, Fiberon Tropics, Rhino Deck Vision Solid, and Trex Brasilia and Accents in particular showed mildew growth after a year in Florida. Symmatrix, Tamko EverGrain, and TimberTech stood out as the most resistant to mildew. Still, if you're concerned about mildew, consider using a deck stain formulated for composite decking. Also check whether the manufacturer claims its product is mildew resistant.

When it comes to wood, unless you apply a finish to preserve a wood deck—we recommend you treat a newly installed deck within a month of installation—it could turn an off color after a year or less. (Our wood decks turned gray in Florida, brown in Arizona.)

Color change in untreated decking isn't confined to wood. Trex Accents and Rhino Deck Vision Solid underwent the most dramatic color shift among composites. The plastic decking, including Deck Lok, Eon Classic, and Bear Boards, and the aluminum LockDry (shown right) we tested experienced little color change, and nearly all did an excellent job resisting mildew.—Ed Perratore

Essential information: For more details, visit our Decks & Deck Stains product page. And use our Outdoor-Living Guide to get the most out of your yard and deck, patio, or porch.

Shower or bath: Which uses more water?

“Take showers instead of baths to save energy,” is an oft-repeated adage of water and energy conservation advocates. But the Department of Energy’s water-heater-sizing pages now list the average shower as consuming 12 gallons and the average bath only 9 gallons of hot water. 

The DOE is also saying that homeowners are using from 15 to 30 percent of their total energy budget just to heat water—up from an earlier 14 to 25 percent estimate. So is soaking instead of scrubbing the way to go?

A spokeswoman for the EPA (which provided the figures to the DOE) says the new figures were based on a study it commissioned in 2000 by independent water-engineering-and-management firm Aquacraft. Ten homes in Seattle were fitted with data loggers on the main water meters a separate meter was placed on the feed line to the water heater and the results measured over two separate two-week periods.

“The nine gallons was actually the actual average draw of water into a bathtub, but you’re talking about an event that can involve more than one draw of hot water,” says Aquacraft President Bill DeOreo. “So that’s not an accurate measure of total average use.”

Consumer Reports’ own experts believe the previous 20 gallons of hot water per bath that the EPA was using (which was in turn based on a studies done by the Gas Appliance Manufacturers Association) to be still a better benchmark.

They also stress that the best way to save hot water is to take showers rather than baths, limit the time of showers, use a low-flow showerhead, and turn off any supplemental showerheads in each shower stall.

Many utilities and municipalities are following this advice. The Portland, Oregon Water Bureau has given away over 4,500 1.5- gallon-per-minute showerheads and 4,000 five-minute “Shower Timer” hourglasses to its customers.

“The hourglasses aren’t as functional as the low-flow showerheads and aerators we give away; they’re more of a behavioral tool,” says Sarah Statner of the Portland Water Bureau. “But we get a lot of positive feedback and hear they inspire more conversations about conservation than any showerhead every will.”

Also backing the move for water economy is the popular eco-blogger Crunchy Domestic Goddess, who has issued her own Five-Minute Shower Challenge that’s drawn numerous responses.—Gian Trotta

Essential information: Find out about the wide variety of high- and low-flow spraying options available Showerheads special. Our GreenerChoices.org Web site offers "50 Ways to Save Water." And see our October issue for a special comparing the performance of tankless, or on-demand, and conventional storage-tank heaters.

10 Questions for . . . Don Ferrier, Green Builder

In this first installment of a new feature on the Home & Garden blog, we put 10 questions to Don Ferrier, president of Ferrier Custom Homes in Fort Worth, Texas. Ferrier (shown below) is at the forefront of the green-building movement in this country.

Q. You’ve been called one of the godfathers of green building. When did you first become interested in energy-efficient practices?

A. In 1881 my Scottish grandfather immigrated to the U.S. because the state of Texas needed masons to build its new capital. He settled in north Texas and had 12 kids, one of whom started a structural concrete business building bridges. I eventually joined the family business and in 1982 a couple approached us about building an earth-sheltered, underground home.
    Imagine a bunker with concrete on three sides and the fourth, which typically faces south for passive solar orientation, made of glass. The result was an extremely energy-efficient structure that’s also storm-resistant and easy to maintain. That’s how I got started in green construction, although we didn’t call it that at the time.

Q. Nowadays you’re building more-conventional homes, although the emphasis is still on energy efficiency. What major developments have taken place in the ensuing quarter century?

A. There’s been a tidal wave of change. To give you just one example, in 1985 I built my first home out of structural insulated panels, or SIPs. Today, 95 percent of the homes we build are made of the material. (Editor's note: Only 0.5 percent of U.S. homes built in 2005 were made with SIPs,
according to the Structural Insulation Panel Association; 70 percent were built with conventional framing techniques.) The amount of knowledge about this sort of construction is no longer obscure. Public education is the other development. I’m a big fan of the LEED for Homes and the NAHB Green Building programs. Both organizations do a phenomenal amount of good and are tremendous resources for builders as well as homeowners.

Q. Can you describe the greenest house you’ve ever built?

A. That would be Heather’s Home (shown above) a prototype home that we started in September 2005 for LEED and the NAHB near Fort Worth. It’s named after Heather, my then 25-year old daughter, who came to me saying she wanted to build a very green home and wanted to do it on a tight budget. That was more a less our mission statement. It’s not the cheapest house out there but it’s far from the most expensive.

Q. What are some energy-efficient features of Heather’s home?

A. It starts with orientation. In our climate, that means controlling the sun to keep the house from getting too hot. A combination of trees, porches, and overhangs shields the glass portions of the house. They’re angled in such a way that during the summer, when the sun is high in the sky, solar heat gain isn’t an issue. But come winter, when the sun is lower in the sky, it warms the house. The house is built with SIPs, which make for an extremely tight, well-insulated house. Then there’s a high-efficiency air-conditioner unit and water heater. The lighting and appliances all have Energy Star ratings. And the outside of the house is a combination of stucco and low-maintenance fiber cement.

Q. What about indoor air quality? How does this relate to green building?

A. Here’s the dilemma. The average home is leaky. That makes it inefficient, but it lets enough outdoor air into the home that you don’t have to worry about indoor air quality. An energy-efficient home is very tightly constructed. But if you’re not careful about what you put inside, you’ll be left with polluted indoor air. So you have to watch what products you introduce into the home. For example, you have to watch out for the VOCs that are in many materials, including cabinets, countertops, carpets, stains, and paints.